RAPPORT
Issue 5 (August 2020)
assessment methods and modes, Centre
for Development of Teaching and
Learning, Reading University 2020). The
written assignment and associated work
on drafting, marking and giving feedback
serves as one of “the main points of
contact with academic staff”, and
consequently becomes ‘a cornerstone of
student identity-building’ (Hanrahan 2019:
15). Developing academic writing
therefore is a particular concern for many
students and a natural focus for a tutorial
with a discipline specialist. A number of
writers have asserted the need to teach
the epistemic value of academic writing
(Hendriks & Quinn, 2000, French, 2018).
This shifts the debate from the generic
skill of writing, to a focus on what drives
academic writing and effective
communication in a disciplinary
community. Furthermore, writers who
align themselves with academic literacies
approaches prioritise disciplinary
specificity and the socially situated nature
of graduate learning and emphasize that
the staff best placed to address this with
students are disciplinary specialists
(Jacobs, 2007, Wingate & Tribble, 2012,
Murray & Muller 2018).
Such an approach has significant
implications for the academic tutors, who
with an insider's grasp of their discipline
would appear to be best placed to help
the student learn to write within the same
discipline. They understand what counts
as evidence, how to make a case or
debate a point with another specialist in
the field. This applied discursive
knowledge gives them an insider’s
understanding of the practices students
need to master and they are in a position
to help a novice ‘write themselves into a
discipline’ (French, 2018) and acquire a
disciplinary voice because this is a
journey they have travelled themselves.
Academic tutors would seem to be the
natural choice to provide tutorial
academic support: however, research
from a number of areas reveals issues
with this. Wingate (2018) describes
reluctance on the part of faculty staff to
teach academic literacies for a number of
reasons. Staff may misunderstand
student needs (Wingate & Jenkins, 2015)
and also subject lecturers may have only
a tacit understanding of disciplinary
discourses and conventions (Jacobs,
2005). Staff may hold students
responsible and assume that writing
academically is something they need to
learn before attending university (Lea &
Street, 1998). Staff may simply lack
confidence or training in addressing
language-related disciplinary issues
(Bailey, 2010).
Altogether research suggests that
academics are distinctly ambivalent about
examining disciplinary academic literacy
practices, in contrast to institutional claims
(Malone 2018). The paucity of institutional
discourse around academic literacies
development has long been recognised
(Lea & Street, 2006) and research
reflecting ongoing staff ambivalence
indicates a mismatch between institutional
discourse around support for learning and
the reality of staff and student experience.
It seems that academic tutoring takes
place in a fractured landscape of
academic support which is spread across
campuses and a range of services and
personnel. There is also a lack of clarity
about exactly what academic tutoring
entails. It is in this context that I want to
examine case studies from the CRA
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